


Like an Old Friend

by Evandar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Death Eaters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1903875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antonin Dolohov’s loyalties are split. On the one hand, he has the Dark Lord he has known and served since his school days; on the other is the man who showed him you don’t need the Cruciatus to win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like an Old Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Written for HPRareFest 2014

He’d followed a hunch instead of sightings. Even here, wizards saw the dark cloak and the Dark Mark and told him what they thought he wanted to hear instead of what was actually true; not thinking of anything beyond removing him from their doorsteps. But he knew Igor well – or, rather, he once thought he had – and when his gut led him to a shabby block of flats in St Petersburg, he followed it without question.

Igor looked…surprisingly well for a man on the run from the Dark Lord. He was alive, for a start, and despite the heavy circles under his eyes and his unkempt beard, he looked much the same as he always had – and he looked at Antonin with much the same expression.

“I should have known he’d send you,” he said. “Come in, my friend.”

Antonin did. ‘Friend’ was a word he hadn’t applied to them for a long time. Oh, he had at first: they were the only two in the Dark Lord’s circle who weren’t native British. They had delighted in each other first for their mutual heritage, and then the common ground they discovered between them. ‘Friend’ had been discarded with their clothing long ago, on a mission for the Dark Lord in the dead of winter; he’d thought never to reclaim it when he’d heard the news of Igor’s treachery.

So, “friend?” was his first question as he entered.

Igor shrugged. “I taught at Durmstrang,” he said. “I saw the mark of Grindewald’s obsession every day for the last fourteen years as I walked from meals to my office.” He laughed briefly, and his smile was crooked and fond and just as Antonin remembered. “So I’m taking inspiration and greeting Death like the old friend he is. Was. Whatever, it’s why you’ve come. Drink?”

The vodka is a common Muggle brand, but it was ice-cold and it burned away some of Antonin’s shock. It burned away some of his anger as well, and he found himself sitting at a familiarly scratched table. Long ago, when trying subtly to recruit some of his fellow countrymen for the Dark Lord’s cause, he’d carved his initials in shaky Cyrillic into one of the legs. Raised in England by parents who’d fled the Revolution (the Muggle side was only half the story; here the Dark had won) it had been Igor who taught him how.

Apparently, in the twenty years that have passed, the table had lasted and his graffiti been found inoffensive by countless Muggles (including the landlord).

“Why?” he asked.

“We had lost,” Igor replied after a moment. “The Dark Lord had fallen to an _infant_. What was there to do? The British ignored their own laws back then and I was lucky to get a trial – Black didn’t.”

“He wasn’t a Death Eater,” Antonin reminded him.

“Worse, then. The son of a good family – powerful, old – and one who had fought for the winning side.” Igor poured them both another, the neck of the bottle clinking against the rims of their glasses as his hand shook. “They were going to sentence me to Azkaban. _Me_. I’m not one of their citizens. They had no right. I should have been deported under international law. I was not. So I took their offer and left under my own power. Found a job.” He shook his head. “You always said I would make a good teacher.”

Antonin had said that. He nodded and drank so that he didn’t have to speak. Igor had come to England in search of adventure, but it had not been his fight. Not really. Stupid to feign loyalty to the Dark Lord when what he really wanted was a fight and a cause to believe in, but they had all been young and stupid then. Even the Dark Lord himself, who thought he could buy loyalty with the Cruciatus and take on the world (even Russia with its own Dark ruler) with an army of…poorly-educated, arrogant purebloods from a shrinking population.

Such a thought was treason, but Antonin couldn’t deny it was true. He’d seen, before he’d been sent on this mission, the latest batch of recruits. Whatever the Dark Lord (Riddle, he’d been then; hypocrite) had done to the Defence job after Dumbledore had refused him, it hadn’t improved the quality of schooling.

“And now?” he asked.

“I can’t go back,” Igor said. He sat back in his chair. “Nor would I. Not even for you, my friend.”

“You wouldn’t?”

Igor’s lips quirked into a humourless smile. “I saw that _infant_ this year,” he said. “I watched him face down a dragon without a flinch. I’ve read what he’s claimed in that rag the British call a newspaper and I know it to be true, no matter what spin they put on it. He defeated our _Lord_ before he could shit without a diaper. Who would _you_ put money on?”

Antonin laughed before he could stop himself. _Treason_ , he thought, and realised he didn’t care. The Riddle he’d known in school, the insidious prefect with his sly smile and Basilisk-glare, was not to be found in the glorified homunculus Pettigrew had scraped out of a cauldron. Something, somewhere, had gone wrong; Dark magic was as fickle as those who practised it, and it bit the hand that cast.

“He wants me to kill you,” he said.

“And does he want you to bring him my heart in a box?” Igor asked.

Antonin blinked at him and laughed again. “No. He trusts me to get it done.”

The Dark Lord trusted him to be as betrayed as any other – more than, in fact, because of the ‘friendship’ they had shared – but Igor hadn’t named Antonin at his trial. Even though he had known for certain; had kissed and licked and stroked the Dark Mark on Antonin’s arm as much as he had the rest of him.

“But you’ve already decided not to,” Igor finished. “Too bad for him.”

His smile was just as Antonin remembered, and that night he discovered that his kisses were still the same; the feel of his body – though it was older now and less muscular – was just as warm. He could look past the lines in his face and the golden teeth, and the small paunch that had softened his belly, because Igor was still Igor.

They breakfasted early, on coffee and sausages pressed between hard slices of black bread, and Igor kissed him briefly at the door. “You always have a place here,” he said, “if you make up your mind.”

It was the same simple, self-assured kindness that had won Antonin’s heart years ago and divided his loyalties so thoroughly that, even now, he couldn’t imagine raising his wand against him. If the Dark Lord had known people even half as well as Riddle once had, he’d have known he’d sent the wrong man for the job.

Antonin nodded once and pulled his coat tighter around himself before he left, walking away from the flat without turning back. 

He knew Igor as well as ever; the Dark Lord less than ever before. He sealed his thoughts away behind Occlumency walls and disapparated out of the damp, drab corridor before he could think to change his mind. Igor would move on soon enough – the ‘here’ didn’t mean St Petersburg – and he would be safe.


End file.
